


The Case of the Purloined Egg

by Zelderon



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Backstory, Candy Kingdom, Cheese Kingdom, F/F, Ooo politics, Politics, Pre - Finn and Jake, Stakes, The Dark Cloud, Varmints
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 02:17:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5316530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelderon/pseuds/Zelderon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Princess Bubblegum is a very busy person. She deals with the day-to-day running of her kingdom, protects her citizens from danger and negotiates with scheming foreign dignitaries. She's built an entire kingdom, an entire people, from nothing and doesn't intend to let it fall anytime soon. She's perfectly happy with spending every day working for the betterment of her children and protecting them from conniving powers who want to exploit her kingdom.</p><p>So why is it that every time she crosses paths with Marceline, she inevitably ends up fighting ancient horrors, changing the geopolitical landscape of Ooo, and causing untold amounts of property damage?</p><p>Preview Chapter 1</p><p>"Bubblegum heard a faint humming noise coming from further down the tunnel. She drew her sword and approached it cautiously. There were many creatures in Ooo who used their singing to seduce unwary travelers to their untimely deaths. As she drew closer, she could hear a hissing noise accompanying the musical humming. When Bubblegum rounded the corner, she found that she was not lucky enough to have encountered any flesh-eating fruit witches or sirens. Fate was not that kind to her."</p><p>Preview Chapter 2<br/>“Look, Bonnie, I need your help.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Monster

Chapter 1

“Princess! Princess! The banana guards patrolling sector 24A said they saw the Monster again!”

“What? Did anyone get hurt?”

“No, everyone’s okay, but this is the third time this week the creature has been spotted.”

“Alright Peppermint Butler, I’m going to deal with this personally. Tell Ambassador Limburger I can’t meet with him today.”

Princess Bubblegum stood up from her congested desk. It was covered in various treaties and interkingdom trade laws signed by the Cheese Kingdom. She was hoping that by sending some letters to the right people, maybe Grocery Princess and Breakfast Princess, she could improve her position in the ongoing trade negotiations with the Cheese Kingdom ambassador. The Grocery and Breakfast Kingdoms were the Cheese Kingdom’s biggest buyers, so if she could convince them that it was in their best interests to stand with her, she could gain the upper hand over Cheese Princess.

Princess Bubblegum walked back to her room to change into more practical clothes befitting her mission. She took off her formal, ceremonial gown and replaced it with a pair of dark blue jeans and a pink t-shirt. She was in the process of putting her hair into a ponytail when she heard a knock at her door. A very concerned-looking servant stood on the other side.

“Princess, perhaps you should appoint a representative for the Cheese Kingdom negotiations. You’re going to drive yourself crazy and burn out if you keep trying to manage everything on your own.”

“This is too important, Peps. I can’t afford to let anyone else do it, and I don’t have time to train anyone in the intricacies of politics, diplomacy, and economics. We have to stop the Cheese Kingdom from flooding the Candy Kingdom with that highly addictive Softy Cheese garbage. I will not let my citizens become addicted to it, and I will not let it destroy our economy. 

“Well, then what about this whole monster business? I know those Rattleballs guys didn’t turn out quite as well as you expected, but you have to figure out a real solution for the defense of our kingdom. We can’t afford to let you constantly put yourself in danger’s way. You need to create and train some competent guards so that you don’t have to personally deal with every threat to the Candy Kingdom’s safety. If you keep swooping in to fix every problem, how will your guards ever learn to function on their own?”

Princess Bubblegum let out a sigh, “I know you care about my well-being, but that’s just not practical. I can’t knowingly put my citizens in danger just because I want my guards to learn some lesson. What if I don’t intervene and someone gets hurt or worse because I wanted to give my guards a training exercise?”

Peppermint Butler didn’t say anything in response. Bubblegum grabbed her pink backpack and her golden sword and left her room, leaving Peppermint Butler.

She quickly walked down the hallways of her castle, only giving brief waves to any candy people who greeted her. Before she was able to reach the secret passageway leading into the rock candy delivery tunnels, she ran into Ambassador Limburger.

“Why, hello Princess Bubblegum. It is a pleasure to see you. That little pfefferminz of yours told me you were unavailable for our sitzung today. I have to say I was a bit surprised, but I’m sure whatever it is you’re doing is more important.”

As per usual in her dealings with the Cheese Kingdom Minister of Trade, Bubblegum had to repress her gag reflex and properly school her face. “Well, I can assure you, Ambassador, that it is an internal Candy Kingdom of utmost importance that I personally need to address.”

The ambassador put on a truly unctuous smile. “Yes, well I think it strange that your servant did not even offer me a cursory explanation for why our meeting today must be canceled. I am a very busy man, Princess Bubblegum. Princess Brie will be most displeased when she hears I have wasted an entire day here whiling away my time.”

Princess Bubblegum didn’t acknowledge the poorly veiled threat and replied, “I’m sure he was afraid it might be inappropriate to discuss internal affairs with foreign delegates. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go handle this matter. Good day, Ambassador Limburger.”

The ambassador’s false smile slipped for a moment before he bowed slightly and said, “Good day to you too, Princess Bubblegum. I look forward to our future dealings.”

Bubblegum took out a set of multicolored keys and selected the correct one needed to enter a door just around the corner from where she had run into the Cheese Kingdom minister. She entered an austere grey room, very different from the colorful hallway just outside the door. A second door and a second key let her into the network of secret passageways that led throughout the entire kingdom and even all the way to the Rock Candy Mountains. Only she truly knew the extent of the underground passageways that ran beneath her kingdom, although she suspected Peppermint Butler was secretly putting together his own map.

She took out a flashlight from her bag and began walking down the passageway. Little candy corn rats scattered whenever the beam of light touched them, and she thought she could hear the fluttering of faraway bats. Once she entered the main delivery tunnel, natural crystal light illuminated her path. Every other day a shipment of crude rock candy sugar was delivered from the mountains to warehouses within the city where it waited to be sent off to other kingdoms. 

Bubblegum heard a faint humming noise coming from further down the tunnel. She drew her sword and approached it cautiously. There were many creatures in Ooo who used their singing to seduce unwary travelers to their untimely deaths. As she drew closer, she could hear a hissing noise accompanying the musical humming. When Bubblegum rounded the corner, she found that she was not lucky enough to have encountered any flesh-eating fruit witches or sirens. Fate was not that kind to her. Instead, she was confronted by the most powerful and dangerous vampire in all of Ooo.

“S’up, Bubblegum.”

“Marceline, what are you doing down here?!” yelled Bubblegum who then looked at the wall in front of her, “And why are you vandalizing my property!”

“It’s good to see you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out my main tumblr at http://zelderonmorningstar.tumblr.com/ for more Adventure Time stuff!


	2. Chapter 2

“What did I tell you about spray painting my things?! This stuff takes forever to remove. Why. Can’t. You. Respect. My. Rules!”

Marceline dodged the chop of Princess Bubblegum’s gold and reinforced peppermint sword with practiced ease. She parried Bubblegum’s subsequent stab using her axe bass and stretched out her tongue to lick Bubblegum’s cheek. Bubblegum recoiled in horror and disgust, allowing Marceline to exploit her momentary weakness and knock Bubblegum’s sword from out of her hand. 

“Wow, what’s up with the new sword, Bonnibel? Do you guys not have any real ones left in the Candy Kingdom? Or are you hunting greed lards again?”

“I’ll have you know I forged it myself out of an experimental peppermint alloy. And anyways, I wouldn’t have needed to make a new sword if you hadn’t lost my old one.”

“I didn’t lose it. I know exactly where it is. It’s falling down that bottomless pit we found in the forest.” Bubblegum rolled her eyes. “Hey, that grass ogre would’ve just gone back to terrorizing those house people if I hadn’t done something about it. How was I supposed to know he was standing in front of that freaky hole in the ground when I threw your sword into his chest?”

“I told you Marceline, grass ogres are an important part of the grasslands ecosystem. They help control the why-wolf populations and even keep away most beta hug wolves. And of course, you couldn’t have killed any random grass ogre, you just had to kill the chieftain's son. Do you know how angry their tribe was? You just conveniently disappeared and left me to deal with that huge mess. Do you know how many gallons of Neddy’s juice I had to give them just to stop them from declaring war on the Candy Kingdom?”

“Pshhh, I don’t know why you’re such a pushover, Bonnie. You could’ve destroyed them easily if they ever attacked the Candy Kingdom. Besides, that idiot chieftain’s first son would have made a mess of things if he had succeeded him. His little brother is a better leader than either of them could’ve hoped to be.”

“And what if we did go to war and that Grass Wizard got involved. Even if my kingdom had won in the end, but how much damage would the fighting have caused. How many lives would have been lost? How many fathers, mothers, sons and daughters would have been crippled? The answer to everything isn’t always violence, Marceline.”

“Maybe once you’ve lived as long as I have you’ll realize the easiest way to deal with a threat is to intimidate it into never even considering attacking you. And, that removing threats guarantees they won’t come back to stab you in the back. Plus, your plans are always too complicated. You’ll end up burning your huge genius brain out. You’re working too hard, Bubblegum.”

“Ughhh, have you and Peps been conspiring together to convince me to be more hands off.”

“I haven’t talked with him for months. But I think he does have a point. You need to get better help. I mean you’re down here investigating vague monster threats personally. You’re the princess of a whole dang kingdom. You shouldn’t be doing low level business like this.”

“The banana guards aren’t ready to deal with real threats yet. I’ve been trying out some new training models, but I won’t sit idly by while my citizens get hurt just so they can gain experience to do things that I can already handle myself. And that reminds me, how do you know about the monster threats, and why were you down here spray painting... — oh my glob you’re the monster.”

Bubblegum thought back to the descriptions her guards gave her for the creature stalking the rock candy delivery tunnels. In retrospect, it should’ve been obvious that it was Marceline. Marceline, however, decided to ignore her last statement.

“Geez Bonnie, you don’t have to use real dangerous events as training exercises. Remember when we first met and you wanted to learn how to fight? Let me let you in on a little secret, none of those monsters I asked to fight were real threats. I called in a few favors and got some of my wizard friends to conjure them up.”

“What about that Ice Dragon that kidnapped you?”

“Pshhh, that was all Simon. I had him make the dragon and freeze me in a block of ice in some random cave in the Ice Kingdom.”

“But, but,....”

“Look, Bonnie, obviously you’re going to have to figure out a different system. Just use that big, beautiful brain of yours. But you should probably try to recruit talent from outside the Candy Kingdom to make things easier on yourself. I saw all those training exercises you attempted to do with the Banana Guards and some of your other citizens after you got rid of those Rattleballs robots, and I have to say sometimes you just need to bail.”

“Well, you still haven’t answered my first question. What are you doing in my tunnels pretending to be some wild monster and defacing my property with your crude drawings.”

Bubblegum looked at the mural Marceline had been working on before she found her and blushed when she realized Marceline was spray painting a pink woman with very exaggerated feminine qualities.

Marceline suddenly became serious. “Look, Bonnie, I need your help.”

“And you couldn’t have just come to the castle and asked like a civilized person?”

“Your little butler would’ve just turned me away and I still haven’t figured out how to crack the aerial laser defense systems you installed next to your lab and bedroom. Besides, you know my favorite hobby in the world is messing with my pal Bubblegum” Bubblegum rolled her eyes again. Marceline’s face became serious,“This is actually really important.”

“A week ago, the Falcon Guard intercepted a kidnapping attempt on the Raptor King’s new egg. The perpetrators were all cheese people.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out my main tumblr at http://zelderonmorningstar.tumblr.com/ for more Steven Universe, My Little Pony, and Adventure Time stuff.


End file.
